


Birthright

by Cactaceae28



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Family Secrets, Gen, Key of Aaravos, Probably wrong theory though, Short One Shot, Sort of AU, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 05:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20688065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cactaceae28/pseuds/Cactaceae28
Summary: At any time, without fail, two descendants of their line had to carry the Secret, no more and no less. That had been the oath sworn generations ago.





	Birthright

The realization –unwelcome, but really no worse than any other that has come in this awful week– comes to Amaya in a flash, with the suddenness that means her subconscious has known it for longer than she has allowed herself to think about it.

It is brought into stark, painful clarity at the end of the funeral, however. She has spent the ritual seven days mourning, lashing out at healers, going through her sister’s possessions and will and it is only as the pyre’s light dims and the gathered mourners begin to leave, when her eldest nephew breaks away from the king to take her hand in wordless support, that she realizes there’s one more duty, one more tradition that absolutely must be observed.

\- 

Amaya herself, as the younger sibling, was only told after their father’s funeral by a grim-faced Sarai and the grief nearly overwhelms her again, until she catches sight of Callum’s red-rimmed eyes and valiant smile, and then it’s replaced by a guilt that turns her stomach. Callum is so young, too young; just five years old, barely old enough to understand the reality of Sarai’s death so how can Amaya burden him with her own mortality, and a secret that precedes them both and must survive them? But what other choice is there?

(She toys with the idea of telling Harrow but that’s almost worse than keeping it close and risking the secret dying with her. Wonderful husband he might have been, but he would doubtlessly end up confiding in Viren or Opeli; and as king, he might well feel tempted to use the information ‘for the good of the kingdom’. No, it must be Callum— or no one.)

Amaya has rarely had cause to find relief in her hearing loss (there has been, of course, the occasional superior she has more-or-less politely snubbed), but here and now, she realizes there’s a loophole it affords her, a way to delay. Amaya’s promotion to Captain and the upheaval after Julian’s passing and Harrow’s courtship meant that Sarai hadn’t had much time to teach her son Sign Language, and though Callum has always picked up the signs quickly, he isn’t skilled enough to follow the conversation they must have.

Their ancestors would understand, surely. There’s no point in passing a mangled story, after all; it’s only logical to focus on mastering the language first and after all, she’s already resolved to tell Callum, eventually.

Her posting in the Breach will come soon; the closer she comes to another promotion, the more likely it is that she will be sent away from the capital for weeks or months at a time; and the Breach is especially treacherous. She’s skilled with the sword, but death can come at any moment when one serves at the border, which means that even with this new resolve, she won’t be able to buy more than two or three years before she will run out of excuses.

Still, it’s the least she can do for her sister’s son.

-

Callum is a bright child. Hopeless in a fight, with a tendency to wear his heart on his sleeve that will end up hurting him, but he is perceptive and sharp when it concerns those he cares about. Amaya can see in his eyes that he has guessed there is something behind her silence, a secret that burdens her mind. It is obvious in the way he applies himself to learning sign language over the following months, with a dedication only matched by his devotion to Ezran. Winter comes once, twice. She can’t leave the Breach in the following spring; puts off her visit all of summer with increasingly thin excuses. By the end of autumn, nearly two years to the day since Sarai died, she can’t delay anymore.

The morning after her return to the capital, she has Gren distract the younger prince and locks the door to boys’ shared room. Callum sits on his bed, and looks at her with a solemnity that is jarring in his young features, and she carefully takes a seat next to him.

-

_Imagine that you have a door that must never be opened. How do you ensure that?_

_You put a lock on it, of course. But what do you do with the key?_

_You may try to destroy it first, but Magic can’t be weaved without a cost. The door and the key are linked together, each exactly as vulnerable as the other. The door must endure; hence the key will be unbreakable._

_So you keep the door (and what it imprisons) close. You keep it where no one but a select few will see it, but also where you and your descendants can keep watch over it every day, until the end of time. _

__

__

_ And you throw the key as far away as you possibly can. Not without a failsafe, of course. First, you make sure no outsider will be able to guess what it is. You send it to a place where magic is already growing scarcer and few remain who remember the true ways, where it will be unremarked and forgotten._

_Forgotten, but not by all. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and lack of knowledge can be as destructive as its opposite. Back before the separation of humans and elves, there had been mixed lineages, rare, subversive in their own way, but useful. Some of these lines survive, if crippled, on the other side. Some can still be offered a measure of trust. _

__

__

_ So an Oath is made with one of those now human lines, one that still has a spark of potential in their blood to bind them to their word. They will guard the Key and the knowledge of its true meaning on the human side of the border, unable to use it, far away from the heart of Xadia. One person, responsible for the secret, and a spare, to ensure it is never lost._

_Aaravos will always have followers but from within the mirror, with no opportunity of escape, he shall never affect the world again._

-

Years after the most important conversation he has ever had, Callum, the last link in a long chain of secret-keepers, sends a Moonshadow elf assassin to recover a simple children’s toy from his old playroom in the Banther’s Lodge. The following night he is left staring at his aunt, who stands across the courtyard, and there is so much he has to tell her. He wants to tell her about the Prince’s egg, about this one chance they have to avoid escalating the violence between both sides. He wants to tell her about Viren’s actions the night of the attack, about the feeling of Dark magic inside his throat and the part of him that urged to run in the other direction.

Most of all, he needs to tell her about the odd pull he has felt ever since the expedition to kill the Dragon King returned, a glimpse of artifacts stolen, an intuition that has only grown stronger since he cast the Aspiro spell in the tunnels beneath the castle; the growing certainty that something has been out of place for a while and also his certainty that the Key _must not_ remain in Katolis.

There are too many people around to risk saying anything. There is no time left to make any other choice. He looks his aunt Amaya in the eye, tries to make her see this is the only way. And then he lies, and let’s himself be dragged off to the boat waiting for them in the river, with nothing but half-formed ideas of what the future is going to bring.

**Author's Note:**

> This one-shot was born of my need to speculate baselessly after season 2, though it ran away from me for a bit. The basis for it is that if the mirror is a prison, and the Key of Aaravos is literally its key, it might have been sent to the other side of the world on purpose. So the Dragon King really lucked out when Callum took it with him shortly after Viren brought the mirror to Katolis. (Honestly, lately I've been leaning more towards 'the Key is not a literal key, it's a tool to unlock the Arcanums' theory, but I figured I'd post it anyway :)


End file.
